BILL HEMMER (HOST): The latest release of Hillary Clinton emails may shine new light on the attack in Benghazi. Clinton and other State Department officials were warned not to blame that anti-Muslim video in the days after the attack. That email coming from US embassy in Tripoli, saying it was more terrorism than an escalating protest. 

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HEMMER: From the guys on the ground, Judge. What does that tell you?

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: Well it tells me that Mrs. Clinton had yet another source for the true and accurate version of events here, which is that Chris Stevens and the others were murdered by Al Qaeda and that she knew it. And yet she persisted in telling another story. I don't know when she read this, or if she read it, but it was put into her inbox before she received the bodies of Ambassador Stevens and the three guards killed with him at Andrews Air Force Base, at which she gives a speech in the presence of the families of the deceased, at which she makes the same statement again, “It was a spontaneous reaction to a demonstration of a cheap video and we're going to get the people that produced the video.”

HEMMER: To be clear, this was September 14th, that was a Friday. That's the day the email was sent and that's the day the remains were brought.

NAPOLITANO: On September 12th, the day after Ambassador Stevens was murdered, Mrs. Clinton emailed her daughter Chelsea and the Egyptian prime minister and said we know it was done by Al Qaeda. How do we know she did that? Because she had received a briefing by then, from CIA, saying it was not only done by Al Qaeda, it was planned 12 days in advance and yet she again persisted in deceiving.

HEMMER: Listen. On that following Sunday, which would have been September 16th.

NAPOLITANO: Well that's when Susan Rice goes on --

HEMMER: Susan Rice did the full Ginsburg on five talk shows.

NAPOLITANO: Correct.

HEMMER: None of this was mentioned in those appearances about this email and about what was happening within the Libyan people.

NAPOLITANO: Correct, this is dangerous for Mrs. Clinton politically, because she needs independent voters to get elected president. She needs more than just hardcore committed Democrats, and independent voters will likely deduce from this, how can we believe you? It is also dangerous for her legally, because she is being investigated by the FBI, and the more evidence they see of deception, the more they ratchet up their inquiry into, has she ever lied anywhere else? Did she lie under oath when she testified two weeks ago?

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HEMMER: She said at the hearing on Benghazi last month that she referred to the video that night in a very specific way. “I said some have sought to justify the attack because of the video.” And she won't ascribe a motive to every attacker. Is there wiggle room in this legally? 

NAPOLITANO: Yes, there's wiggle room legally, but she is the mistress of deception. She used words so carefully chosen to create the impression that she was not lying when she said this was done as a result of a video.

HEMMER: Wow, powerful stuff. 

Previously: